


purgatory

by hellatortoise



Category: Genji Monogatari | Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Meta, this is extremely abstract and probably makes no sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 22:39:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12851019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellatortoise/pseuds/hellatortoise
Summary: Yugao and Rokujo meet in Hell.





	purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> I know that there are very few people who will know what this is all about, but I felt like I needed to write something or my head would explode. In the future maybe I'll do something less serious. And less meta lol.

When Yugao comes to, everything around her is white. In the distance, a few elegantly shaped clouds, shimmering faintly with golden luster as if painted, float in the endless sky. She sits up, turning her head around. Nothing but the same whiteness in every direction.

“Am I….. is this….?” her brow furrows. All of the scriptures described Hell as darker and… pointier? As far as she can see there is no Mountain of Needles or Lake of Blood. But neither is there the fragrant lotus pond of the Pure Land. And, well, the Shinto priests never did describe Heaven in any detail, but certainly _this_ can’t be…

“Hell? No.” A low and measured voice materializes behind her, and she whips around, heart skipping a beat. “Just some unfinished business. A purgatory, if you will.”

An achingly beautiful woman kneels a short distance away, lounging against a brilliantly embroidered armrest that _certainly_ wasn’t there the last time Yugao looked. Her thick black hair, faintly tinged with blue, snakes out behind her in a long train, and though her face is free of makeup it beams prismatic light.

Oh! And then Yugao recognizes the face.

“The Rokujo lady…?” she breathes out.

Rokujo leans her head on her arm. “Silly how I’m called by the street my house was on. You, too, named for the moonflower in your front yard.”

Yugao’s head swims. She can’t seem to remember… ah, yes, there’s the yard with the moonflower tangled in the front gate but… what… came before that?

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Don’t think too hard about it.” Rokujo smiles, and it’s edged with something bitter and poisonous, something Yugao wants to put her tongue on. “Just call me Rokujo.”

Oh, the Rokujo lady. So poised and beautiful, so distinguished, so literary. Truly, one of Genji’s most shining ladies.

Oh.

Yugao puts a hand to her forehead, head suddenly light. She remembers…. The darkness, the man in the hunting cloak, the old house with the overgrown garden, and -

Rokujo winces and sighs. “Oh dear. I’m terribly sorry about that.”

And then -

_She’s lying in Genji’s arms, staring blankly at the rafters, counting absentmindedly the chirping of crickets in the garden, when a stripe of moonlight falls over her face and she slips out of her body as easily as shedding an outer coat. She hovers a few feet away from her head, watching her body’s eyes slowly close._

_A spectral woman appears, see-through just at the edges, black hair like a river of ink swaying behind her in an imperceptible breeze._

_“Who…?”_

_“Oh, I suppose you_ have _never seen my face before,” the woman laughs, covering her smile with one elegant sleeve. “It’s such a shame. I had hoped you would have recognized me, we are bound together by fate so strongly. I am the lady that lives in the Rokujo Mansion, the woman Genji forgets. How ironic to be remembered only as the one who was forgotten.”_

_Oh! The Lady of Moonflower hides her face immediately, ashamed at being seen in such casual clothing while the Rokujo Lady primly folds her many-layered sleeves. What a distinguished beauty! And one of Genji’s great ladies! How could she ever hold up to such a woman? Tears of shame prick her eyes._

_“Why have you come here?” The Lady of Moonflower asks, voice tremulous. “Why….”_

_“Oh darling,” the Rokujo Lady sighs, taking The Lady of Moonflower’s hands and pulling them from her face. “I’ve come to kill you.”_

_The Rokujo Lady snarls wide and her face contorts into a devilish grin, oni tusks and horns sprouting from her mouth and forehead. Her long hair lashes of its own volition, bursting into ghostly blue flame, and the hands clenched around The Lady of Moonflower’s wrists grow long black claws. She laughs like a dog growling._

_Her hair whips around The Lady of Moonflower’s neck, and that blue flame laps at her skin. It’s not painful, just uncomfortable pressure against her spectral throat, but dimly she can hear her body screaming and thrashing, and Genji yelling, and priests chanting holy Sutras. She can feel the holy words pulling at her spirit, and then there’s pain as she splits at the seams, trying to return to her body against the lashings of The Rokujo Lady’s demon hair. Hot tears sting her eyes as she chokes and gasps._

_“I am angry,” The Rokujo Lady howls, voice doubling in resonant pitches that send sharp shivers down The Lady of Moonflower’s spine. “I am angry and I am powerful! I will eat your fear and I will rend The Shining Prince into four pieces. I will scream! I will rage! I will REND!”_

_Black spots edged in rainbow halos swallow up The Lady of Moonflower’s vision, and her last moments are filled with the sound of The Rokujo Lady’s screaming blending with her own._

Yugao blinks and blinks and tears spill down her cheeks. Rokujo has her face buried in her arms.

“It’s always so much worse than I remember,” she says faintly. “I’m… I’m terribly sorry about all that.”

Yugao wipes her face. “No, I… I… You were so… sad.”

At that Rokujo looks up, giving her a puzzled glance through strands of her hair. “Sad?”

More of her life is coming back to her now. Her cousins and gentlewoman, To no Chujo, giving away her little pink. Watching The Rokujo Lady’s elegant carriage pass their ramshackle suburban street. “Yes, sad. Sad that you had to kill _me_. Sad that you couldn’t… touch… Genji?”

“Ah.” Rokujo looks down at her hands. “I always thought… well. I expected you to be angry.”

Why can’t she remember back before - before? She clenches her hand into a fist, just to feel the sharp arcs of pain as her nails dig into her palm. “I am angry,” she says distantly, frowning slightly. The anger is there, yes, but... “Not at you. At To no Chujo, first, for leaving me and my daughter behind. And then at Genji, for...” She drops her eyes in shame. “Why am I so angry? If not for… well… he was such a good match for a nobody like me… I would have wanted for nothing under his care. I should have been grateful.”

“No, that’s… That’s just it.” Rokujo slides closer, staring intently at Yugao. “I had his patronage. Why should it matter that he visited other women? Why should I care that he took a young orphan for his principle wife instead of a distinguished lady like me?” Her pupils narrow to slits, and horns sprout from her forehead. Her voice raises in pitch until it is a screech. “Why should I care that he snubbed me for gutter trash like you? Why should I care that he didn’t take of my daughteeeeeeeerrrr!”

Yugao grabs Rokujo’s hands. “Oh, stop that! We can have normal conversations like rational adults, can’t we?” Oh, her hands are shaking!

Rokujo bares her teeth at her. “Don’t try to tame me! I have a right to be angry! Oh how I prayed and scraped at the feet of the gods when Genji told me my spirit had killed you! Do you know how guilty I felt then? And how guilty I felt when my spirit killed his _wife?_ I’ve never known such agony! I was groveling at his feet then. I wish I had never met him! Patronage this and inheritance that - why did I have to rely on a man I despised? Don’t deny me my anger!”

Yugao frowns and clenches Rokujo’s wrists sternly. “I’m not! I see what you’re saying, and it makes sense. It’s just our lot in life. Women, I mean.” She looks around - still the same white blankness as before, interspersed here and there with those strange flat clouds. “Good thing it’s just us here.”

Rokujo sighs, and her horns and fangs disappear with her exhale. “Just us.” She leans forward, slowly and inexorably as a falling tree, and plunks her forehead against Yugao’s collarbone.

“I’m sorry,” Rokujo whispers. “I’m sorry I killed you. I’m sorry I killed Aoi. I’m sorry I killed Murasaki. I was just… lashing out at whoever I could.”

Yugao breathes in sharply and hopes Rokujo can’t hear her pounding heart. “I’m glad,” she hisses through her teeth. “I’m glad I didn’t have to spend more than that one night with him. You should have killed me before To no Chujo even laid a finger on me.” The landscape around her warps in rainbow-edged spirals, and she can see the future laid out before her like a fan - the future of Tamakazura, her beloved pink, and the heartbreak and unfairness caused by selfish men. She forces herself not to blink, nosing against Rokujo’s hairline to ground herself.

Rokujo breathes out hard and clenches the front of Yugao’s robes. “I wish I had died before I met him, too.”

Yugao slides her nose down the side of Rokujo’s face, fluttering her eyes closed, and ever so gently kisses the edge of her jaw. Even though her eyes are shut she can see the future at the edges of her mind, playing out in endless loops, like a hopelessly tangled ball of unspooling red thread. “He’s dead now, isn’t he? We’re dead too. He’d be easy to forget.”

“Hmm.” Rokujo hums against Yugao’s neck, and pulls away to look at her. The horns have grown back in, and her hair is beginning to pull up at the ends with little flickers of blue. She leans in to press her lips to Yugao’s, a sweet glancing kiss, sweeter than spring shoots or plum wine, sweeter than jade or incense.

A third eye flicks open on Yugao’s forehead, and before her a scene unfolds like a paper fan - a young woman leaning over a writing table, gently and carefully brushing out a poem on plain white paper. Behind her crouches an enormous many-headed demon, gnashing its teeth and chattering in the lady’s ear. Murasaki, the Purple, the color of love and binding, the blood of her deepest hurts seeping into the page.

_So that’s why I can’t remember anything before that_ , Yugao thinks calmly. _I was called into existence the night To no Chujo came._

Yugao reaches out a clawed hand, fingertips centimeters away from Murasaki’s throat. She feels power throb through her veins, white hot and prismatic, clogging her throat and chest. But. But. Murasaki is crying diamond tears that refract rainbows as she bows her head over the page, and the edges of her sleeves are quietly flickering with ruddy flames. The weight of her secret sadness is crushing.

Yugao remembers the words she heard Rokujo say that night, when her spirit had ripped herself from her body and the page. _I am angry and I am powerful_ . She was a fiction, a one-sided paper doll, a character in a story, but through her Murasaki had channeled this secret hurt. In that way she had transcended the story, and somehow ended up _here_ , in this in-between place, not fiction and not reality, and was given life. Anger was her fuel, and the means of her metamorphosis.

So Yugao pulls her hand back, leaving Murasaki and her snarling guardian behind, and the world fans back into existence around her.

As she pulls away from the kiss the vision ends, but the understanding remains. Around her the whiteness has been overlaid with a sumptuous palace. Not Genji’s palace, or the Emperor’s, or anywhere she remembers - somewhere unique and beautiful, just for the two of them. She flicks out her tongue - forked - and looks down at her hands - clawed. Rokujo looks similar, chewing on the corner of her mouth with one ivory fang.

Yugao takes Rokujo’s face in her hands and grins, wildly, unashamedly. She kisses her again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.


End file.
